


Once Upon a Time (In a Parallel World)

by NephthysMoon



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, F/M, Parallel Universes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-11
Updated: 2015-12-11
Packaged: 2018-05-06 05:38:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,650
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5405042
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NephthysMoon/pseuds/NephthysMoon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Through the looking glass and into a parallel world, Rose Tyler finds herself confronting doppelgangers of some of her dearest friends (and total strangers) as she discovers who she really is, and why she's there.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Once Upon a Time (in a parallel world)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Elvaron](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elvaron/gifts).



> Warning: Extreme crack!fic. This was born from watching The Tenth Kingdom around the same time I got this prompt, and going 'oh, this should be fun'.

**Once Upon a Time (in a Parallel World)**

There was just something about Soufflé Girl’s that made people want to come back. It wasn’t the soufflés, that was a given. Everyone knew that Clara, the petite brunette who owned the store, couldn’t make an actual soufflé if her life depended on it. It didn’t stop anyone from actually tasting them, though. A person would have to be completely heartless to ignore the hopeful expression in her big brown eyes every time she brought out a new attempt, no matter how wretched it was going to taste.

Perhaps Clara herself was the reason that there was always someone in the shop; it was certainly a mishmash of contradictions. Part-café, part-antiques, and part-bookshop, the shop seemed to be overflowing with books, knickknacks, and little bistro sets – the glass case of pastries, cash register, and hissing cappuccino machine looking bizarrely out of place in the back. But then, Clara herself was a mishmash of contradictions. On one hand sweet, innocent, and charmingly naïve, on the other a fierce temper and a no-nonsense attitude.

Yes, on the whole, Clara was a large draw for the shop.

But then, so was Rose. Almost twenty-one, Rose was Clara’s assistant. She was fabulous with tea, a little less fabulous with the antiques, and utterly hopeless with the proper shelving of the books, but her wide, tongue-touched smile and cheerful disposition were a delightful combination.

Twice a week, Rose’s boyfriend, Mickey, would come in and do the heavy lifting for them, sometimes more often, if they got special deliveries. Mickey’s all-around good cheer was possibly another draw.

Whatever it was, people stopped into Soufflé Girl’s, and just kept coming back. There was the nurse, Rory, who worked down the way at the Royal Hope Hospital, who came in three times a week, usually meeting his wife, Amy, for lunch. Amy would often stay hours after he’d gone back to work, tapping away on her laptop, building another of her Melody Malone mysteries word-by-word in the cheerful quiet of the shop. Donna and her fraternal twin, David, showed up every Wednesday; they were old friends of Clara’s, though, and usually swept her off for some adventure for the afternoon. Rory’s favorite doctor, Martha, joined him for lunch on the days his wife couldn’t make it, and sometimes stopped by after work by herself.

Captain Jack (though what he was a captain of, no one was really sure) came in with his friend, The Doctor (though, again, what the man was a doctor of was a mystery), at least once a week.

On the rare times that the lot of them were all in there at the same time, the place took on a party atmosphere, as though old friends were having a rather spectacular reunion (though Clara would be the first to tell you that she dreaded those days – the Doctor and David always seemed to be at odds with one another).

It really was a completely normal Tuesday when everything shifted for the normal inhabitants of Soufflé Girl’s.

The archaeologist that Clara bought her antiques from, River, stopped in for a brief moment, bringing the latest shipment of rare, first-edition books and an ornate mirror with a stained-glass frame. Mickey was working his second job, and it fell to Rose to wrangle the unwieldy item into the lone storage room, where it would wait for appraisal and cleaning before being put on display.

“Hello, sweeties,” the taller woman said, kissing both of them on the cheek and waving at the other inhabitants. River was older than most of the clientele, a beautiful woman whose lines had fallen in kind places, never without a smile, and always willing to have a cuppa with the others. It was actually River’s fault that the Captain even knew the place existed; she’d mentioned it, in passing, while bringing him an artifact – things she couldn’t sell to Clara, River often turned over to the Captain, it seemed – and Jack promptly dragged his best friend to see the place.

While River and Jack played catch up at the table in the darkest corner of the shop, the Doctor offered to help Rose tote the massive mirror to the store room; an offer she was only too grateful to accept, as she’d not been looking forward to doing the task alone.

Only after they’d maneuvered it into place did he leave her, nodding at River as he passed her in the hallway. The older woman smiled when she saw the young blonde girl entranced by the mirror.

“They say that was the Queen’s mirror,” River said, making Rose jump. “Her magic mirror.”

Rose raised an eyebrow. “You mean like, ‘mirror mirror on the wall’?”

“The very same,” River agreed, standing behind the younger blonde and dropping her hands on her shoulders. “Wanna give it a try?” Her eyes twinkled merrily, and Rose laughed.

“Alright then.” She cleared her throat. “Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who is the fairest of them all?”

Rose felt silly for holding her breath when nothing happened, and laughed at herself. River’s hands tightened on her shoulders, and before Rose could ask why, the older woman pushed her towards the mirror. Rose raised her arms, hoping she could deflect the glass from cutting her face as she rushed towards the surface, but when the impact did not come, she lowered them, and opened her eyes.

She stood, not in the dark storeroom of Soufflé Girl’s, but in a large, sunny field of ripened wheat.

Before she could work up a good head of steam about it, a small creature perched on her shoulder. “Oh, dear, are you lost?”

Rose’s head whipped around, trying to focus on the – was that an actual fairy on her shoulder?

“Of course I’m a fairy!” She didn’t realize she’d asked the question aloud until the little redheaded creature responded. “I am Pond, the fairy godmother, and I’ve half a mind to turn you into a frog!”

“No, please, I’m sorry. I just – where am I?”

“Oh! Oh, dear. Are you the one then?” Rose stared at Pond; the fairy wasn’t making any sense.

“I’m sorry – I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Pond flittered off her shoulder, saying ‘follow me’, as she led Rose towards a run-down house on the edge of the field. Shrugging, Rose followed, determined to get to the bottom of where she was and why she was here. She had been positive that River had pushed her – actually pushed her – into the mirror, but that must be wrong. River wouldn’t do that. They were friends, after a fashion.

The little red fairy pounded surprisingly hard on the door of the shack and an old, worn-looking man opened it, standing in the bright summer sun in a faded tweed coat. “Go away – oh, it’s you, Pond. What do you want?”

The little fairy perched on his shoulder and whispered in his ear, gesturing towards Rose, who was standing there looking at him in horror – it was the Doctor – and she’d just realized why the little red fairy on his shoulder was so familiar. She looked just like Amy – only about a tenth of her size! What in the name of sanity was going on here?

“Hello, Rose,” he said, not unkindly. “Pond has been telling me how she found you. Would you like some tea?”

Rose followed him into the dark shack, gasping when she saw the mirror – the mirror River had pushed her through – hanging on the wall in his hovel.

The Doctor and Pond both called her to join them at the table, and she tried not to giggle; the Doctor sat in a chair, like a normal person (something she’d never seen him do before – he was never one to sit still for very long), but Amy – well, Pond, rather – was perched daintily on an overturned teacup, a small cup in her hands, her legs crossed, and a rather impatient expression on her face.

“Sorry, Rose, terribly rude of me – but Pond didn’t introduce us. I am the Storyteller. I maintain the stories – all the stories. There used to be quite a lot of us, but now there’s just me,” he said, his smile fading at that. “Just me,” he repeated in a whisper. He shook himself as she joined them. “Tell me, Rose, do you know the stories?”

“What stories?” She frowned. This was distinctly odd, and she was starting to wonder if maybe she hadn’t actually hit the mirror, and was lost in some bizarre dreamland.

“Oh, all of them. The Frog Prince, Cinderella, The Glass Coffin, The Imp Prince – all of them.” His hands waved wildly as he spoke, gesturing at a bookshelf along the wall and the faded gold titles on the spines that seemed to glimmer in the darkness of the shack.

“You mean fairy tales?” A line from a favorite ‘story’ came back to her, and she resisted the urge to laugh. _Curiouser and curiouser._

“Yes,” he agreed, his voice far calmer. “I suppose, where you come from, they would be considered fairy tales. Here, they are just life stories. The faith of children gives them truth, and they live here, each of the stories changing, just a bit, as it is retold.”

“And where, precisely, is here?”

“Credici,” Pond answered for him. “The land of belief.”

“And how exactly did I get here?” She was fairly certain she was in the most bizarre dream she’d ever had. Best to just play along until she woke up, after all.

“Oh, I imagine through the mirror. It happens, from time to time.” Pond dismissed that with a wave of her scarlet-tipped fingers. “Girls fall through the mirror, or come through deliberately, hoping to find a Prince Charming. Usually they end up becoming wicked stepmothers instead.”

“Is that so?” She resisted the urge to roll her eyes. She was definitely never reading another fairy tale again.

“Oh, yes. In fact, we’ve got one of them on the throne now. Years ago, Good King Peter and his queen perished, along with their only child, and some distant cousin inherited the throne. It goes in cycles, you know. Sometimes it’s a good king and queen on the throne, like when it’s Cinderella’s story making the rounds. Sometimes, though, it’s time for Snow White’s story, and so we have a wicked queen, like we do now. It balances out in the end. When the wicked queen dies, her story ends, and the child takes her place. Usually Snow White, actually. But she comes in and she and her husband will be a good king and queen, but sometimes they’ll have trouble conceiving – usually if it’s time for a Sleeping Beauty to make an appearance, but other times they have a son who falls in love with a cinder girl, or they’ll have a spoilt daughter who needs to kiss a frog – if you know the stories, you know how that happens.” The Storyteller shrugged.

“So, which is it now?” Rose was curious despite herself.

“Ah, well, it’s interesting. King Peter’s daughter would have been the next Sleeping Beauty, actually, and the distant relation that took the throne was the father of her Prince Charming – only he had a Snow White sister, too. So, we’re not terribly sure.” Pond smiled, and jumped up to dance in the air around her chair. “I know! You can go! It would be a huge help to us!”

 _Ah, here was the quest part of the dream_.  “What, go into the castle of a wicked queen and try and figure out what story is coming next?”

The Storyteller nodded, and she was so going to draw him as soon as she woke up – make the Doctor realize what he’d look like when he was old. She couldn’t wait to wake up, like Dorothy, and tell her friends they were in her dream.

“I could disguise you, and he could write you into the story. No one would know you didn’t belong there but you.” Pond was pleading.

“If he can just write the story, why doesn’t he just write out the wicked queen?” It seemed highly logical to her.

“Oh, there are rules – rules upon rules, Rose,” he said, shaking his head and waving a finger in her face. She wasn’t half-tempted to bite it off. “Little things – those I can change, but writing out major characters is a huge no-no. The Bad Wolf would erase ME if I did that!”

“The Bad Wolf? Like – the big bad wolf?” Definitely curiouser and curiouser.

“She’s not very big, actually. Sort of medium. But she created this place. For all intents and purposes, Credici is her world. She brings life. And death, for that matter. These are all her stories. I just get the honor of telling them.”

“Let’s think,” Pond said, settling back into her perch on the bottom of the teacup. “How could we get Rose into the castle?”

The two fell silent, and Rose left them to it. It certainly wasn’t her plan to sneak her into a wicked queen’s castle, and she wasn’t about to help them with it.

Eventually, the two decided on a role she could play; the Snow White Princess of the current generation was in need of a lady-in-waiting. Rose would fill that role. She allowed herself to be dressed appropriately by Pond, and the Storyteller filled her ear with the things she needed to know. When she woke up, she was going to have to write this down – she’d make a killing. Perhaps Amy could help her.

She bid the Storyteller farewell and followed Pond down the dirt road to the city. In the center was the most amazing castle she’d ever imagined, and she continued to follow Pond’s lead until she reached an ornate door inside the castle. Amazingly (or not, considering she was dreaming), no one seemed to question her presence, despite the sheer number of people they’d passed on their way in. She was almost positive the guard by the castle’s gate had been Rory, and she’d waved at him, from habit, a little surprised when he’d startled at that and waved shyly back.

But now, the door in front of her was opening, and she got the fright of her life; Donna was the Snow White – a young, teenaged Donna, with hair so dark it was almost black instead of the bright red she was used to. And not-Donna took one look at her and gasped, dropping to her knees. “My lady,” she whispered, gazing up at her in amazement.

“Actually, pretty sure I’m here to be doing that to you, Princess.”

Pond gestured for the girl to get to her feet from her place on Rose’s shoulder. “This is the Lady Rose, your new attendant. Rose, meet the Princess Snow White, your new companion.”

Rose frowned as the girl curtseyed to her and mimicked the motion. She wasn’t sure, but she’d always thought that Snow White had been fairly young when her stepmother had cast her from the castle – far, far younger than the not-Donna in front of her.

“Hello, sweetie.” Rose spun at the voice, and not-Donna cowered behind her. Standing tall in a regal gown, her wild honey curls constrained under a pearl-studded net, was River. And River wasn’t looking at the not-Donna, but at her – Rose. With a start, she realized that Pond had disappeared the instant River had shown up.

The taller woman stalked toward her, stopping when she was less than a foot away. “Oh, dear, we are in trouble, aren’t we? Did that bumbling idiot and his precious little Tinkerbelle think they could sneak you in here?”

Rose said the only thing that came to her mind. “What?”

“Stepdaughter, please excuse us.” With that, River grabbed her by the arm and hauled her out of the room, dragging her down the stairs while keeping up a low-voiced conversation as she did. “That moron convinced you to come here and unseat me, but you listen to me, little girl, this is my world now. I came through that mirror decades ago, and unlike those other idiots that followed the script, I knew enough about these stories to stay in power far longer than any of them. Snow White should have been sent off to hide in the forest ten years ago, but by keeping her here, by refusing to play by the rules, I’ve managed to avoid the fate of this ridiculous place. And I have power, Rose, unlimited power at my disposal, and you will not take it from me.”

She finished her little diatribe as they reached what could only be the throne room, and she flung Rose to the floor.

“This impostor thought she could come here, proclaiming to be the Bad Wolf!” River said, her voice echoing through the castle. “But we will not be fooled! The Bad Wolf does not show herself to us. It is only through her gifts that we know her!” She continued on in the same vein, but Rose’s attention was arrested on the tapestry behind River. Embroidered gold tendrils snaked around a petite blond figure, holding a shining silver key in front of her and standing in the doorway of a dark blue box. Her. The girl on the tapestry was her.

“The imposter will be thrown in the dungeons, and tomorrow, she will be executed!” River finished her speech, and the various courtiers cheered. Some threw whatever they were holding in Rose’s direction, and a gruff male voice interrupted her silent perusal of the tapestry.

“Let’s go.”

Rose worried that it wasn’t a dream, after all. Surely, surely, if it had been, she’d have woken by now. Captain Jack (who was, oddly enough, just known as the Captain in this place) had tossed her in this cell several hours before sundown. And beside her, in the very next cell, in fact, was Donna’s brother, David. Though he was probably not-David, in the way that Donna was not-Donna. Well, the red hair had given that away. He didn’t speak to her. He didn’t even look at her. But the long, cold night in the dungeon was finally, finally coming to a close. The sun peeked over the edge of the horizon, and Rose – well, Rose was afraid. All night, she’d noticed tiny gold tendrils of light seeping through the cracks in the walls; they hovered around her for a few moments before disappearing – looking, for all the world, as though they’d been sucked into her.

And she felt odd. Almost as though she were burning, from the inside out, but of course, she couldn’t be. Except Rose was afraid that as impossible as she thought this place to be the day before, it might just be real, after all.

All that night, time had seemed to crawl by, but the sun seemed to rise with astonishing speed, and suddenly, the Captain had returned, a small, pointed object held in his left hand. He didn’t come into her cell; instead he went into not-David’s. “It’s time,” she heard him whisper, and the tall, skinny ginger jumped to his feet and looked at her with an expression she’d seen on the real David’s face once or twice. Only now, did she know what it was: longing.

Not-David followed the Captain into her cell, and held out his hand for the small object. “I’m sorry,” he said, leaning over her. She wanted to move – she tried to move – but she couldn’t. “I’m so sorry. The curse must be fulfilled.”

With those rather baffling words, he gently poked her finger with the strange, dark object and Rose felt the entire sleepless night catch up to her at once as she slipped off into sleep.

In the darkness of her dreams, Rose looked up to see the figure from the tapestry standing in front of her.

“Who are you?”

 _I am the Bad Wolf_ , the glowing, golden girl said. _I create myself. And you, Rose, are me. Or will be me. Or were me. Time doesn’t really matter when you’re a goddess. But most importantly, you are the Sleeping Beauty that was meant to be here almost five years ago._

“Good King Peter,” the Storyteller had called the man – her father. Bad Wolf nodded.

_The king died, and his queen, terrified of the curse, fled to the land beyond the mirror, to hide her infant princess. You._

Of course. The curse must be fulfilled, Not-David said so. Her curse. The Sleeping Beauty curse. But then…

_He and Jack are waiting – the gold light is still entering you – it’s the power of the Bad Wolf. A long time ago, in a different world, I took in a power you wouldn’t understand – not this you, anyway. And I became the Bad Wolf. And since you’re me, even if it’s a different world, that power is yours now._

She didn’t want the power, wanted to fight it off, but the tinkling laughter of the Bad Wolf lulled her into stillness, and the burning under her skin spread.

_He’s going to wake you up now, Rose. Good Luck._

Soft. His lips were soft on hers, and she opened her eyes, noticing a faint line of freckles across his nose that she’d never seen before. Jack was standing in the corner of the cell, smiling down on them.

And in the doorway to the dungeons stood River.

Rose pushed not-David off and his head smacked against the bars of the cell, while Jack spun to face the regal woman.

To Rose’s horror, River pulled a pistol from the folds of her gown. “Oh, Jack, you never could say no to her, could you?” The words were taunting, soft, but underneath, Rose was sure there was genuine hurt. “I’m sorry, my love.”

The gun’s retort echoed in her ears as Jack slumped down the bars, coming to rest on the floor beside not-David, brilliant red blooming around a small hole in his chest.

The burning under her skin caught fire, and the world was lost to gold.

“Imposter, you called me.” Rose’s usual accent was gone, and her new, posh voice seemed to layer over itself as it came from her mouth. “You, of all people, know how untrue that was. I am the Bad Wolf, sister of the TARDIS, wife of her Thief, the golden goddess of Time and Space. And you, River Song,” she said, pointing at the trembling woman before her, the gun long forgotten in her apparent fear of what Rose had become, “should not be here.”

Jack’s death, drawn-out as it had been, grated on her, causing pain unlike any she’d ever felt, the power burning under her skin getting more powerful. “I bring life,” she whispered, and a small fraction of the golden tendrils left her hand and entered Jack, making him gasp as the breath came back to his body.

“I AM QUEEN!” River shouted, having regained her composure somewhat. “YOU CANNOT STOP ME!”

“You are tiny.” The cultured voice was hard as it left her lips. “I can see every atom of your existence, and I divide them.”

Rose waved one golden hand and River screamed as her body began dissolving into little specks of gold light. River vanished and not-David was begging her to release the power, but she didn’t know how, tears pouring down her cheeks as she burned from the inside out.

Not-David pulled her into his arms and brought his lips slowly to hers. The power passed from her to him, and she gasped as his eyes flared gold for a brief moment.

“Get her out of here, Jack,” he said, his voice dark. The gold power she’d been holding for so long was consuming him, his body burning with it.

And then he threw his head back, and the gold light shot out from his hands and his neck, and instead of not-David, it was the Doctor standing in front of her, a mad grin on his face. And not the ancient, aged Doctor who claimed to be the Storyteller, but the Doctor she knew from Soufflé Girl’s. And then the exhaustion caught up to her, and she slipped away, collapsing on the floor in a heap.

She came to in the shack of the Storyteller, Pond on the ancient man’s shoulder, and the Doctor beside him.

“Now then, Rose Tyler, I suppose I should thank you,” the Storyteller said, grinning at her. “Told you only the Bad Wolf could write out a wicked queen.”

The Doctor nudged him. “You’ll write this story, of course. And that’s alright, we’re all stories in the end. Just make it a good one, yeah?”

“I’m going to wake up now?” she asked, and it was Pond that answered.

“Of course you are, Rose. You’ll come to in the storeroom of Soufflé Girl’s, with David standing over you. No one will remember River, or Jack, or the Doctor. They didn’t belong there. Do you remember what the Bad Wolf told you? About how she took in that power in another world? Well, that world runs parallel to yours. And in her world, the girl who became the Bad Wolf is just about to agree to spend the rest of her life with her David (who is actually named John). Don’t worry about the details, Rose. Just know that you were here, when you were needed. Now, cross through the mirror and close your eyes.”

“And run, you clever girl, and remember me,” the Doctor added, winking at her.

Sometime in the course of Pond’s speech, she’d grown to Amy’s proper height, and the ancient Storyteller had vanished. Rose put her hand on the glass of the mirror, not surprised when it slid right through. She dared one last look at Pond – Amy – and the Doctor – the not-David Doctor.

“Will I ever see you again?” she asked, looking into those grass-green eyes. She was almost positive he was holding back tears.

“You can’t. But if you want to do something for me, Rose, I’ll tell you what you can do. Have a fantastic life.”

The mirror sucked her in before she could respond, and she closed her eyes, just like Pond told her to, and when she opened them, there was David, leaning over her, with Donna, Clara, Mickey, Amy and Rory around him.

“Hello,” she said, slipping her hand into his. “Did you kiss me awake?”

And he laughed. “You’re no Sleeping Beauty, Rose Tyler,” he said, his voice caressing her name the way the Doctor’s had on the other side of the mirror. “You are the big bad wolf.”

“Not so big, really,” she said, grinning.

There really was something about Soufflé Girl’s. Something that just – drew people in, and made them want to come back. And in that café-cum-bookstore-cum-antiques shop, two very special people fell in love. And this was their story.


	2. Afterword, by Amelia Williams

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been told this part is confusing...so, to clarify - the Afterword is written by Rose's Amy, as they write the book of her adventures together, to the Doctor. I hope that clears it up!

**Afterword, by Amelia Williams:**

Hello, Old Friend. And here we are, you and me, on the last page. By the time you read these words, all of this will have already happened for you. So know that we all lived very, very well. Rose and David married about a year after you left us. I think, though, a part of her will always, always love you – and so will we. We’ve been here long enough to know that this is a parallel world to yours, Doctor, and that this Rose wasn’t _your_ Rose Tyler. But you’ve got Jack and River, now, so I’m not too worried about you.

But if you want to do something for us – for Rose – she says for you to do this: have a fantastic life.

This was the story of Rose Tyler, maybe not _your_ Rose Tyler, but Rose Tyler all the same. And this is how it ends.

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, all that's left is the Afterword. I hope this was an enjoyable surprise.


End file.
